The question is: What is the name of
the discotheque, located in Slobodan
Milosevic's hometown of Pozarevac, and
owned by Milosevic's son, Marko,
that Nato might bomb as a "signal" of
seriousness?

Last week, after Nato bombed Pozarevac,
The Washington Post reported:

"Nato military sources said
the attack on Pozarevac was designed to
send a chilling signal to the inner
circle of the Yugoslav leadership,
which includes several members of
Milosevic's extended family. ... "We
are going to draw the noose around them
until it starts to hurt,' said a senior
U.S. policy-maker. "When people like
Marko start to feel the pain of this
air campaign, then Milosevic might wake
up and come to his senses."'

Milosevic is frightening. So is the
thinking of that "senior U.S.
policy-maker."

Nowadays no diplomatic farce is
complete without a cameo appearance by
Jesse Jackson. Media raptures about
his brokering of the release of the three
U.S. soldiers has underscored for
Milosevic America's aversion to even the
mildest costs of combat. But, then, surely
Milosevic noticed when President
Clinton visited with the family of one
of the captured soldiers. A nation serious
about military objectives would not
advertise its distress about three
prisoners.

"I think," says Yale's Donald
Kagan, author of "On the Origins of
War," speaking of the United States today,
"you have to go all the way back, nearly
2000 years, to the Roman Empire, to find a
single power so pre-eminent compared to
all others." True, but neither economic
nor military pre-eminence necessarily
translates into effective power, absent a
certain hardness that could be called
Roman.

Perhaps
somewhere near Brussels there is a
warehouse stuffed with ballpoint pens,
stationery, ash trays and other things
emblazoned with Nato's logo. Perhaps
Nato intends to stay in business until
all that stuff is used up. Or until the
bombing campaign achieves the
objectives about which Nato says it
will not compromise. Whichever comes
first.

Clinton says the bombing may continue
into the summer. It probably will not, for
two reasons.

First, before Milosevic is toppled by
his supposedly disgruntled military
(Nato's hope du jour), Nato's
determination to continue punishing Serbia
may be sapped by television pictures of
the wretchedness Nato is trying to produce
in Serbia, as when the power goes off in
pediatric and geriatric hospital wards.
Second, Clinton surely shares the high
estimate of himself that "a senior
administration official" recently
expressed to The New York
Times.

The official explained that Clinton,
although he has ruled out compromise with
Milosevic, will be able to compromise:
"Once Clinton decides that's what he's
going to do, he'll sell it. If Nixon could
sell the fall of Saigon as peace with
honor, Clinton can sell this."

More farce: Gerald Ford was
president when Saigon fell. But when there
is no penalty for failure, failures
proliferate--like these senior
administration officials who are saying
these astonishing things about the debacle
they have produced.

Unless the emptying of Kosovo becomes
the first Balkan diaspora to be reversed,
what Clinton will try to sell as a Nato
success will be Milosevic's success in
radically and permanently altering the
demographics of that province. Even if the
Kosovars had homes to return to, they know
that sooner or later--years, perhaps
decades hence--whatever compromise
"peacekeeping" force is cobbled together
to make Kosovo safe will leave. Serbia
will still be what and where it is--fierce
and next door. Kosovars know that a
synonym for "safe area" is Sebrenica.

Nato's minuet of capitulation has
begun, accompanied by the U.S. media's
celebration of Jesse Jackson's "success."
How likely is it that Milosevic, Jackson's
partner in prayer, is going to be deposed
and put on trial?

It is deeply demoralizing, and perhaps
even de-moralizing, for civilized people
to watch justice traduced. In recent years
Americans have been mesmerized by the
extremely public spectacles of O.J.
Simpson essentially getting away with
murder and Bill Clinton essentially
getting away with perjury and obstruction
of justice. Now Milosevic may be getting
away with war crimes on a scale not seen
in Europe since the Third Reich collapsed
54 years ago this week.

It collapsed as Soviet soldiers reached
the center of Berlin after that city had
been bombed for several years and pounded
by artillery for weeks. And some of the
city's trams were still running, a fact
that may not be known by those who are
conducting today's war, 30 years after
they militantly sang, in the words of an
old spiritual, "Ain't gonna study war no
more."

Our
opinion

THIS
was written and published before
Nato's bombing of the Chinese embassy in
Belgrade--raising what George Will calls
Nato's "diplomatic farce" in the Balkans
to a whole new level.

The
above news item is reproduced without editing other
than typographical